Five Reasons Why Finger Painting is Important for Children

Finger painting is messy. It takes time to clean up the mess. So, we sometimes try to find way to make it less messy. However, it’s actually necessary for children to do the messy finger painting. Why? Here are the reasons:

Children’s sense of curiosity will be fulfilled

Children always want to try everything. It includes the messy finger painting. It makes them curious. When we allow them to do what they want, their senses of curiosity will be fulfilled.

Making a mess is the step they’ve got to go through

Not allowing children to make a mess will only make children skip the process they should’ve gone through in the first place. It will be like something is missing and their curiosity will stay inside them. Next time, they’ve got a chance to make a mess, they will do it. If this happens in public places, they may make a mess which may be disliked by others. This likely happens as they haven’t got the experience to control the mess they make -which they will be able to learn – if they’ve got the chance to make a mess in personal place such as home.

Children will able to exercise their gross motor muscle

When they move their arms freely -which make the activity messier- they actually exercise gross motor muscles. As they do the activity often, their arms will be stronger which will make them able to control their arms movement better. And this actually will make them do the activity less messy next time. They will be able to make the paint spreading only at the space provided for the painting without crossing it. It’s due to their ability in controlling their arms. And this ability is important for later learning such as in writing letters and numbers.

Children will able to exercise their fine motor muscle

The next step after their gross motor muscle developed is fine motor muscle. Finger painting will give them the experience to exercise fine motor muscle as well, especially the activity which requires fingers movement more than arms. And the exercised fine motor muscles is important for later learning such as writing letters and numbers, just as the exercised gross motor muscles.

It’s a way to learn responsibility

Finger painting is messy. But by doing so, children actually can learn how to clean up the mess. If we show them how to do it, they would definitely follow what we do. So, if we let children do the activity regularly, they will learn that they have to clean up after they do the messy activity. And when they’ve learned about it, they actually have learned about the value of responsibility.

So, let children do the messy finger painting. By doing so, they will actually learn to do the activity less messy as they’ve gone through the process they’ve got to experience. Starting from really messy to neat and tidy. And along the process, they also learn about responsibility by cleaning up the mess they’ve made.